Not even crumbs

Staten Island’s Allen Cappelli and his fellow Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member Mitch Pally of Queens recently offered a modest and very reasonable proposal to the board as it prepared to vote on its 2012 budget. They said the MTA could divert a minuscule $20-million portion of its mammoth $12.6-billion operating budget and use the money to restore previous service cuts that have adversely affected riders.

After all, that amount represents just two-tenths of one percent of the overall budget and could be easily accomplished by trimming redundancies and waste within the vast “MTA empire” as Mr. Cappelli called it.

Mr. Cappelli said. “I’m asking for a $20-million additional cut in another area to move into giving the riders a break in services they need. We need to show the riders that we are listening.”

It’s a reasonable request and it makes perfect sense for a widely mistrusted public authority that should be concerned about giving the public the perception that it cares about their needs. But this is the MTA, so it’s not surprising at all that Messrs. Cappelli and Pally’s proposal was voted down.

“The reduction in projected subsidies underscores the fragility of the MTA’s current fiscal stability,” said Joseph Lhota, the new MTA executive director. “It also indicates how important it is for the MTA to continue its recent efforts to reduce costs, even as we work to improve services.”

For now, let’s ignore his claim about “work[ing] to improve services.” The MTA gave up on that concept a long time ago when it first stepped into a sea of red ink from which it has yet to emerge. The MTA isn’t even working to maintain already inadequate service. In fact, it’s cutting it even more.

As examples of this failure, Mr. Cappelli cites the lack of MTA bus service into and through the sprawling College of Staten Island campus, and the cut of weekend service on Manor Road to Sea View.

“It’s a disgrace, people are walking down the street on the weekend on crutches and having to hobble down to Victory Boulevard to pick up service,” Mr. Cappelli said.

He said there are similar “horror stories” throughout the MTA service area.

But what really sticks in people’s craw about Mr. Lhota’s statement - and equally galling statements made by other agency officials - is his whining about the “fragility” and “uncertainty” of the MTA’s budget situation. Virtually everyone who uses the MTA system, especially the buses and subways, is enduring his or her own personal budget crisis, but ordinary people have no way to increase their own personal revenue stream.

That’s why the tendency of the MTA, the Port Authority, the City of New York and other governmental entities to see struggling ordinary citizens as ATMs of first and last resort is particularly outrageous.

Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis bitterly denounced the board’s rejection of the proposal, adding, “We’ve seen the MTA go down this road before, and unfortunately, this is just another example of this authority that’s been fiscally irresponsible kicking the can down the road.”

Indeed, the agency has paid nearly $2 billion alone in interest on its debt this year and has the fifth-largest municipal debt load in the country, trailing only perennial deadbeat California, New York State, Massachusetts and New York City.

To be fair, a part of that, is the shameless refusal of the state and the city to meet their own responsibility to properly fund essential mass transit, as other states and cities gladly do. But then, the MTA’s profligate spending on an army of six-figure sinecures and non-essential frills has made its budget hole that much deeper.

So where does the MTA reflexively turn to find the money to make up the shortfall? From ever more service cuts and ever-steeper fares and tolls. So commuters suffer doubly.

This vote to reject the service cut restorations follows a long-standing pattern with regard to this “too-big-to-be-held-accountable” authority, so it would be easy for commuters and their advocates to see the situation as hopeless.

But as Mr. Cappelli notes, the MTA board’s 6-4 vote this week may represent a defeat by the numbers, technically, but it can’t be overlooked that two other board members sided with Messrs. Cappelli and Pally. A 6-4 vote the other way certainly seems within reach. And if the MTA continues to treat riders merely as a source of unlimited revenue, rider backlash will grow. That would be the best thing that could happen for the beleaguered riding public.

At least the P.A. gave people crumbs by scaling back the toll hike ever so slightly. The MTA wouldn’t even do that.